The device, called HeartLogic, could potentially revolutionise treatment and prevention of heart disease

According to John Boehmer, professor of medicine at Penn State College of Medicine – who presented his findings at the recent American Heart Association annual meeting in New Orleans – the implant, called HeartLogic, could revolutionise potentially health care.

Prof Boehmer and his team analysed nine hundred people with the condition over 12 months to see if implants already used in heart failure patients could be re-fitted with forward-looking tracking sensors.

These focused on heart rate, activity, sounds and electrical activity across the chest, plus depth of breathing.

Impressively, the software predicted nearly three-quarters of worsened heart disease cases (70 per cent) a month before they actually happened.

“This is a new and clinically valuable measure of worsening heart failure, and it combines a number of measures of the physiology and heart failure, much like a doctor will look at a patient,” Prof Boehmer said.

“Doctors look at all their signs and symptoms, get some tests, and put it all together and make a decision about how well or ill the patient is. HeartLogic does it similarly.

“It integrates a number of measurements of what’s going on with the patient, including breathing, activity and heart sounds, and puts that all together to give us an index that we believe is both sensitive and specific for heart failure.”

Drawing parallels with existing techniques in use, he likened the approach to managing diabetes.

“It’s like having high blood sugar,” Prof Boehmer explained.

“The doctor doesn’t need to know about every high blood sugar and every high blood sugar doesn’t result in a hospitalisation.

“But you want to treat it before it gets very high and the patient becomes so symptomatic they become ill and end up in the hospital. This is the same concept.”

Around 42,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from heart disease, each year.

According to the British Heart Foundation, cardiovascular disease causes more than a quarter (26 per cent) of all deaths in the UK; that’s nearly 160,000 deaths each year – an average of 435 people each day or one death every three minutes.

Around 42,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from this, each year.

Since 1961 the UK death rate from cardiovascular disease has declined by more than three quarters, but it still remains one of the biggest causes of mortality.

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